Moroccan terrorist suspect arrested in Milan

A 22-year-old Moroccan man arrested in Milan is suspected of involvement in the attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis on March, in which 22 people – mostly tourists – were killed.

It is not clear at present what his alleged involvement in the attack was. He was arrested under an international warrant issued by the Tunisian authorities.

Milan Special Branch chief Bruno Megale told media that the man had been among migrants who had arrived in Sicily on board a boat last February. His mother and an unspecified number of siblings are resident in the Milan area, but have not been arrested.

Megale said that it will be for Milan magistrates to decide whether the man, whose name was given as Abdel Majid Touil, should be extradited to Tunis. Under Italian law, nobody may be extradited to a state where the death penalty is in force, unless specific guarantees are given for the person’s exemption from the death penalty. The penalty is technically in force in Tunisia, but in practice has been suspended.

Interior minister Angelino Alfano, who recently stated that there was no reason to believe that terrorists were being infiltrated into Italy on board migrant boats, congratulated the police for working “without excluding any channel of possible infiltration.”